Known for his pioneering work in Chinese historical phonetics, EdwinPulleyblank has compiled this Lexicon to present in convenientdictionary form the result of his researches on the phonology of MiddleChinese and its evolution to Mandarin.

The Lexicon complements Pulleyblank's earlier book, MiddleChinese, by providing reconstructed pronunciation forapproximately 8,000 Chinese characters at three historical stages.Early Middle Chinese is the language of the Qieyun rhyme dictionary ofAD 601, which codified the standard literary language of both North andSouth China the preceding period of division. Pulleyblank'sreconstruction is a thorough reworking of that of Bernhard Karlgren,completed in the twenties, and in some respects differs radically ... Read morefromit. Late Middle Chinese is the standard language of the High TangDynasty, based on the dialect of the capital, Chang'an. It has notbeen reconstructed previously as a separate stage but is of specialimportance, since it is the ancestor of most modern dialects. EarlyMandarin represents the speech of the Yuan capital, Dadu (presentBeijing), around the year 1300, for which Pulleyblank'sreconstruction differs considerably from that of Hugh M. Stimson. Thesources and methods used in these reconstructions were fully discussedin Middle Chinese, but recent developments in phonological theory haveled to some modifications in detail.

The entries are arranged alphabetically according to the Pinyinsystem with an index, by the traditional Kangxi radical and strokenumbers. The Morohashi number is also given for each character,enabling easy reference to this important Chinese thesaurus. Anotheruseful feature of the Lexicon is the inclusion of the numbers inKarlgren's Grammata Serica for characters that are included in thatwork. Concise English equivalents for the Chinese words are alsoprovided.

Reconstructed forms are given in the International PhoneticAlphabet. Though this requires a number of phonetic signs anddiacritical marks, these are carefully explained in the introduction.Every effort has been made to provide a useful tool for students ofChinese literature and China's relations with foreign countries, aswell as for specialists in Chinese linguistics.